Not long ago I accepted that I didn’t think I’d be getting any Beauty Advent Calendars this year. I waited too long, umming and ahhing over which to pick, and most of the affordable choices went out of stock whilst I was procrastinating. Until some rather fortuitous timing and bargains came my way, and now I have two of the most exciting looking advents to share with you this Christmas!

First up I got the Amazon Beauty Advent Calendar for a rather amazing £15.01! This advent was, originally, £50 but it went to £30 on their daily deal and I had £14.99 beauty product credit due to a beauty box of theirs that I ordered (see my post later this week for that one) which is how I got it for so little. The box, a few days ago, said it would be back in stock at the end of November but now says unavailable so, unfortunately, I don’t know if it’ll be back but no harm keeping an eye and I’ll definitely be on the look out next year too.

The box is rather cleverly set up with all of the products inside these gold and black boxes – The advent itself has a gap at the bottom and when you pull each box out the one from above falls down. The middle row has a perforated area in it so I presume that one of the days has a bigger than average box but I guess we shall see! I have tried to avoid spoilers for this box, I like my boxes to contain surprises, but I know that brands such as Barry M, Adell, Biore and Bomb Cosmetics are included amongst many others. The contents is said to be worth over £185.

The LookFantastic ‘Beauty in Wonderland’ beauty advent calendar is one I never thought I’d get this year. At £79 it was just a lot to spend, even with a £300 contents and with the fact that I’ve seen absolutely no spoilers of the contents!

So how did I end up with this one? I saw, on facebook I think, that there was an offer on the advent of 20% off when the calendar was purchased with a subscription to the LookFantastic beauty box. Now this, basically, only made the advent cost 80p less, because the box itself costs £15 and it only took £15.80 off the total but it did get me thinking!

Having the advent a the forefront of my mind, again, reminded me that Glossybox have just changed their reward system and rather than just getting ‘Glossydots’ to spent on future boxes you could now convert them in to credit for Lookfantastic! This led me to exchange my reward points for £8.80 off – The Calendar was then £69.40 plus I got a free sub box!

£69.40 was still a bit too much to spend, though, so I thought some more and remembered that I had some TopCashBack money saved up from this year and that added up to £41.59! If you’re interested in TopCashBack it’s really worth doing and if you use my link (which is here) I’d really appreciate it as I’d earn some more TCB once you’ve earned your first £10.

So, with the 20% off, the glossybox credit and the TopCashBack I got this for a grand total of… £27.81 (plus a free LookFantastic) and I earned an extra £1.50ish on TopCashBack to add to my new total! Talk about a bargain.

As you can see the box is absolutely stunning. I saw a lot of people saying they’d keep the box and re-purpose it as storage which I was sure I wouldn’t bother doing. And then I saw it. It’s so beautifully well made and the Alice in Wonderland themed design on the box is so, so beautiful! It’s amazing.

LookFantastic was the beauty advent calendar that I was most excited about, even when I thought I had no chance of getting one, because I loved that they’d avoided spoilers and, for me, that’s so exciting! All that we’re told is that the contents is worth £300, it contains 9 full sized products and 16 deluxe samples and 19 of the products are exclusive to LookFantastic! When you consider that a lot of people aren’t loving how samey a lot of advents are, this, year, the exclusivity is a massive draw as well as the amount of full sized products and the value.

So that’s that… That’s how I’ve got two beauty advent calendars this year, and how I only spent only £42.82 on advents with a retail value of £129 and with a combined contents total of over £485! You would be safe to assume that I’m very excited about the lead up to Christmas, and that’s without looking forward to how excited the kids will be. Lots of places still have advents so if you don’t have one there’s still time to get one before the beginning of December, and some companies seem to reduce theirs as time goes on (I got one, a few years ago, in January, which obviously negated the advent part but I got some awesome products!

Do you have an advent this year? Which one? If not are you hoping to score one once the prices drop?

1 Comment

I’ve been really wanting a beauty advent calendar, just so I can experience it.. I almost bought the Amazon one when I saw it was on sale. I ended up just getting a choccy one this year, but maybe next year I’ll get one.. I think I said that last year too. Haha